Another Member of the Club

They met young.  Both with dark hair and blue eyes, they had individually decided, early in life, to marry someone with those same characteristics.  After all, it was such a win in the genetic lottery it deserved to be treasured and passed along.  

The fact that they were both smart and thoughtful and funny and driven might have had something to do with their successful union over the years, but I've always clung to the dark hair and blue eyes theory.  It makes me smile whenever I think of it.

We were friends when our kids were young and we were all in Chicagoland.  They lived near Michael Jordan, so there was usually a good story or two to be told.  He and TBG were Goldman Sachs colleagues and she and I were happy to find one another amongst the wives.

She was a prosecutor who wore a pager on her belt.  She left parties to assist the police in securing bad guys.  Her voice on the phone was precise and commanding as she grabbed her coat and purse and waved goodbye.  I thought that was pretty cool, too.

She went to celebrate the 4th of July at the annual parade in Highland Park, and ended up in the hospital with injuries.  There's a long road ahead, with many surgeries to come.  Someone has set up a Meal Train.  They are well insured.  They have lots of family and friends around.  Time will pass and bodies will heal.  

But the psyche will take a little longer.  Their close knit community now has a Before/After moment, and so do they.  It's life altering but, as Gabby Giffords says, we look forward, not backward, with COURAGE.

It shouldn't have to take courage to go to a 4th of July parade though, should it?

My friend is another example of someone who was in the right place at the right time doing the right thing with the right people when some fool with a high capacity weapon decided to make it a bad time for all.

And now I'm hearing about an 8 year old with a severed spinal cord, whose twin's body was also ravaged by bullets, whose mother sent her surgeon to tend to her babies and not her and I am so mad that steam is pouring out of my ears.  My fingers can't go fast enough, trying to get this out and on the screen so that it will lessen the pressure building in my head which is filled with actual, boiling rage.

Seriously, I can feel it expanding in my skull.  My temples are throbbing and my eyes are searching for answers - in the sky, on the oriental carpets - and then I turn inward and there is only sad. 

All this so that a 20something can be free to buy a weapon like that?  

I do think that life and the pursuit of happiness came before the 2nd Amendment in the Framers' minds. 

I keep thinking that this is the event that will shake America to its core, that will take liability protection from the manufacturers, that will require serious background checks and the merging of all the lists in the land so that hardly anyone can slip through the cracks (like our shooter here in Tucson).  

I keep thinking that, until I remember the Las Vegas Massacre - 60 dead and nearly 500 wounded at a country music festival where, I am sure, there were a lot of 2nd Amendment freaks getting their peculiar freak on while the bullets were raining down from 32 floors above.

That one, I knew, was big enough and horrible enough and touched people who might otherwise be opposed to sensible gun restrictions and..... well, we all know how that turned out.

Dead schoolkids don't matter.

Dead grandparents don't matter.

Dead parishioners and patriots don't matter.

I am so so very angry.